


1001 Nights Aren't Enough

by lavvyan



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-27
Updated: 2009-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-05 07:32:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavvyan/pseuds/lavvyan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney buys a magical lamp.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1001 Nights Aren't Enough

It went down like this: on Sundays, Rodney's girlfriend liked to make him get up far too early, drive fifteen miles on far too little coffee to some stupid flea market on the very outskirts of civilisation, let himself be dragged through piles of junk for hours, and carry everything that caught her eye: "Look, yet another set of fake Tiffany glasses! Ooh, a book on secret Tahitian sand origami techniques! Oh hey, that looks like Aladdin's lamp! Wow, an antique 19th century colour-wash-copier!"

The things he did for sex.

Sadly, not even the sex was enough to keep a relationship between a physics genius and a biology major – seriously, _soy sprouts_? – going for more than five months, and at the end of that time he was left with a heart that wasn't quite broken, two record players that very definitely were, enough Feng Shui crystals to set up export business to China, and Aladdin's lamp. Rodney, being the practical man he was, threw the entire pile of garbage away.

Except for the lamp, which somehow caught on his sleeve and rubbed along his red-striped shirt _just so,_ and then there was a huge puff of dark green smoke and when Rodney could breathe again a man stood in front of him, grinning and bouncing on the balls of his feet and obviously not caring at all that he'd just _appeared out of nowhere. _

Rodney didn't squeak. But it was a close thing.

The man introduced himself as Jinnshellapaharradat ben Geenerralshellapaharrasomethingsomething – "My last owner called me John." – and was a genie who liked sword fights, educational television shows, and everything that involved flying carpets; and oh, Rodney had three wishes.

The first wish was simply a test and didn't really count and anyway, John had no right to mock Rodney for his love of those little Asian mango fruit pudding cup thingies. A man had urges, for god's sake. However, Rodney's mood lightened a little when John-the-genie sort of moved in with him instead of puffing back into his lamp, hogging the TV but also doing the laundry and cooking fabulous citrus-free meals. Their conversations mostly circled around sports and who's turn it was to do the dishes, because Rodney couldn't explain what it was like to be born by a mother and John wouldn't talk about his experiences as an immortal sprite. But John turned out to be not entirely stupid and perfectly capable of understanding basic physics, which made for a few interesting discussions, and Rodney surprised himself with his willingness to spend money on pointless acquisitions such as the Back to the Future Ultimate Edition with nine hours of bonus features that were actually worse than the movies, which pleased John to no end. All things considered, they got along surprisingly well.

The second wish was an accident, eight nights after John had popped out of his lamp and Rodney had started agonising over world domination versus an endless supply of leggy blondes.

"I really need to get laid. Regularly." He hadn't even meant to say that aloud, it just came out somehow. Rodney was still busy hyperventilating when John toppled them back onto the couch and stopped his panicked monologue with, "Whatever you wish," and the dirtiest kiss Rodney had ever experienced.

Afterwards, when they were sweaty and naked and more than a little sticky, Rodney tried to figure out whether he'd just gotten incredibly lucky or if he'd used John or if John had used him. "This is where I use my third wish to set you free, right?"

John smiled, a little mockingly and a little sad. "I'm afraid it doesn't work that way, Rodney."

Lucky, Rodney decided hesitantly. Confused and with a weird fluttering feeling in his chest that might be indigestion or not, but lucky.

The third wish, Rodney avoided for weeks. John seemed to enjoy himself, he argued, and making him go back into the lamp after such a short time seemed a little cruel, especially since there was no way of knowing when he'd get to come out again. Or what his next owner would ask of him. Really, he'd just postpone his decision and keep his tongue in check and watch John sprawl on the back porch to soak up the sun a little longer. Besides, he still didn't know if world domination was worth the headache to check if the leggy blonde of the day wasn't some rebel assassin ninja or something equally inane. And if John still happened to fulfil that second wish of Rodney's, well, who was Rodney to complain?

And if he might have fallen in love just a little bit, it wasn't hurting anyone. Anyone but Rodney, and he was old enough to be used to it.

It was in the kitchen, of all places, that John called him on it. "You'll have to make your wish eventually," he said, munching on a chocolate chip cookie. "Unless you want me to get detention for slacking."

No, Rodney didn't want that. He also didn't want John to leave, _really_ didn't want John to leave, except what had he expected, that an eternally young genie would keep giving him blow jobs and amazingly hot sex until Rodney died of either old age or heart failure? He could wish for John to love him back, he supposed, only that wouldn't solve anything and be more cruel that Rodney thought himself to be. So, third wish, something that would be uncomplicated and easy to fulfil, something that would perhaps make John remember him from time to time, something-

"Stay," Rodney blurted, his cheeks flushing with immediate mortification over his slip. John paused, then he smiled again – that sad, knowing smile of his – and reached for another cookie. He shrugged, studying the cookie like it was the most fascinating thing on Earth.

"Whatever you wish."


	2. Lamps and Stuff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John falls in love.

John's first master was Creates Sun, way back when stone buildings were a novelty and humans believed in just about everything other humans could think up. John's master hadn't created the sun, but he had created John. Only John didn't have a name then, or a lamp. He was thoughts made flesh, belief called into being, and he served his taciturn maker without a will of his own, let alone character. His master asked little of him but fetch exotic herbs or driftwood from faraway shores or the yellow powder that grew underground. Shortly before the old man died at the wise age of thirty-one, he bound John to a simple stone he gave his youngest nephew as a present. He and John never exchanged a single word.

John's eighty-seventh master was Khaled. He still didn't have a name, but both character _and_ a will of his own. By then, wish fulfilment had become all about the rules: genies, as his kind was now called, only lived in lamps or rings or precious gems. They granted three wishes, no more. They didn't make people fall in love with other people (although John could, actually) and they didn't raise anyone from the dead (John could do this, too, but it wasn't very pretty). They served the letter of the wish and not its spirit, and that was probably why John never became popular or sought after because following rules? He sucked at.

Khaled was a murderer and a thief and John didn't like him. It became the time when John learned about the magic of interpretation, of doing what he thought was right. When Khaled demanded the Sultan's camels, he got it. Of course, then the Sultan didn't have any more camels, so by logic neither could Khaled. When Khaled demanded magic powers, he got them. Exactly what the use of turning water into _green_ water might have been, not even John could say, but surely it was good for something.

When Khaled, pale and angry, demanded gold, he got it. Enough to choke on it. After that, John spent almost two hundred years in his lamp until the black seal that marked it as dangerous had faded. Most of those years, he slept.

John's last master was Rodney. A few centuries ago, John had started to make up names of his own, each wilder than the last one. It was fun, as was messing with people, and he looked forward to playing with this guy. For starters, though, he cut him a little slack and gave him the name John had picked for himself a good four hundred years ago, because he'd liked the sound.

Rodney started out with the test-wishing that had become routine once people lost their faith in what other people told them. Then he couldn't make up his mind. Truth be told, his master's incapability to decide didn't bother John all that much. He was too busy rediscovering television, happy to find out that now it came with colours. Then Rodney said something about getting laid, and John decided to take it as a wish. He could have summoned one of the blondes Rodney kept going on about, but he had to admit he was pretty easily bored for someone who spent most of his time in a brass prison without a window. Plus, he had discovered sex early on and decided he kind of liked it.

He still did. And Rodney obviously did, too, because he offered to give up on his blondes altogether and set John free. But life wasn't a Disney movie and things didn't work that way. Still, it was nice of Rodney to ask. And for the next few days, John very carefully didn't try to imagine what living might be like.

Rodney started throwing John poorly hidden sideways glances shortly after they had started working on that second wish. He hemmed and hawed a lot about world domination versus blondes versus Nobel Prize and managed not to choose anything at all. John quietly watched his master fall for him and didn't do anything about it. Because it wasn't his place or decision (it was). Because he couldn't make people fall out of love (he could). Because Discovery Channel had just started a weekly show about ancient Egypt (he'd been there).

Eventually, the slow tug and pull of the lamp became too great to ignore any longer. "You'll have to make your wish eventually. Wouldn't want me to get detention for slacking, would you?" They were standing in the kitchen munching on cookies, something John would miss. He knew it was pointless, becoming attached to a human, so he'd miss the cookies but not Rodney. Never mind the easy fun they had, the way they connected on some basic level despite all their differences. John couldn't make wishes for himself. Things just… they didn't work that way.

Except Rodney's third wish was for John to stay. Impossible, a paradox, like asking an immortal thing to live, something that could never be. But Rodney hadn't said _how long_ he wanted John to stay, so maybe there was a loophole. John might stay another week, let Rodney down as gently as someone not used to human interaction could, and return to his familiar, safe, boring prison to just breathe for a hundred years.

So he said it, for the last time: "Whatever you wish." Watching Rodney's happy smile, he never noticed the tug of the lamp fall away. Not until he woke up with the first rays of the sun and found he was hungry. Rodney knew people who knew people who knew _people,_ and after a few days John no longer had a lamp, but he had a name and the documents to prove it. He could no longer make anyone rise from the dead, but he could eat himself sick on chocolate and peanut butter and laugh and whimper all through Rodney's warpath-approach on caretaking.

Rodney was John's last master.

He became a lot of first times, though.


End file.
